


Two Steps Back

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Arguing, Canonical Character Death, Carolina And Maine Brotp, Grief, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past MaineWash, Spoilers for the end of season 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chorus receives intel on a box held by Malcolm Hargrove. And everyone turns to look at Wash and Carolina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Steps Back

The briefing on the latest intel from Hargrove’s ship is a quiet one, everyone walking on eggshells and looking at the Freelancers out of the corners of their eyes. Wash isn’t listening. Wash is thinking about a box. Wash is thinking, _I could have opened that box. I could have stopped this_.

Wash doesn’t say anything for the rest of the meeting, follows Tucker’s boots out, on autopilot. It’s like a fog, until he opens his mouth. 

It isn’t until later that he speaks. It isn’t until later that they fight.

"I don’t get it!" Tucker yells, turning away from him. "He was a monster! Why the fuck should we break into the Chairman’s ship just to steal back the helmet of a guy who tried to kill us—”

"He wasn’t always like that," Wash protests, going after him. "He was—"

"Was what?" Tucker demands. "Some big cuddly teddy bear? _Doubt it._ Give me one good reason why we should do this.”

"Because—" Wash tries. "Because he—"

He doesn’t have his helmet on, and he wishes he did. Feels exposed in the shitty florescent light of the New Republic bunker they’re staying at. Everything is too harsh, too bright, makes words trip over his tongue. Tucker crosses his arms, quarter turned away from him. Angry. Always so angry. 

But listening. He hasn’t left yet.

"He liked hamburgers," Wash says, finally. "Most food, really. But he hated soft drinks. I think it was the carbonation. He…he used to fall asleep on the way back from missions, and sometimes he’d purr in his sleep."

Tucker makes a mocking noise, but otherwise doesn’t say anything.

"I taught him how to make s’mores using a Bunsen burner we stole from the Science Division," Wash continues. "Connie was the only one who could get a piggy-back ride out of him. He used to shove York into things and then act like it was an accident— especially when he’d do something to piss of Carolina."

Carolina. He hasn’t seen her since they got the news. There’s a crack in the concrete of a wall she was standing next to after the briefing ended. Even Wash hadn’t been brave enough to go after her, then.

"He got quiet, after Connie left." Wash says. "I don’t know if that was Sigma, or…."

The stab of grief is so sharp, he can’t make himself finish the sentence. He swallows past the dryness in his throat, a painful throb of muscles acting.

"He deserved better than having his head nailed up on the wall like some kind of prize buck."

"Don’t be so melodramatic," Tucker says, but his tone has lost most o the edge of before. "It’s his helmet. Not his head."

"He barely ever took the thing off," Wash continues. "One of those Spartan-types. Spartan III, I think. He didn’t really talk about it. He really didn’t talk much at all. Even before Spiral."

Wash laughs a bit at a memory, looking down at his hands.

"He used to growl at the staff, back on the Mother of Invention, after," he says. "Scared the shit out of them. He thought it was funny."

He can feel Tucker’s eyes boring into him, but he doesn’t look up.

"No one else could ever figure out what he was saying, when he growled. But I always could," Wash says. "We— I— He was …he was my friend."

Wash knows it doesn’t sound that way. He knows what it sounds like.

(It’s not wrong.)

A hand under his chin, cupping it, tugging it up, surprises him. He presses into the palm, just for a second. It makes the throbbing lump in his throat hurt less. When he feels like he’s regained some control over his facial expression, he looks up.

Tucker still looks angry, brow furrowed and eyebrows knit together. But there’s understanding there too, in the set of his mouth.

"You could have told me," he says. "I wouldn’t have freaked out."

Wash pushes into his palm, sighs.

"It didn’t seem important," he says. "He’s dead."

Tucker strokes his cheek, slides his head back around the back of his neck and into his hair. Palm resting protectively over his neural implants.

"Alright," he says. "Let’s go get him back."

*

But if it’s one thing Wash has learned, it’s that nothing is ever easy.

“What are you talking about?” Carolina demands. “We can’t make a run on Hargrove’s ship just for Maine’s helmet. You know that.”

“We have to,” Wash insists. “Carolina, we can’t just leave him—“

“I’m not listening to his,” she says, standing and heading for the door, Wash dogging her heels.

“We have to go back for him—“

“It’s not _him_ ,” Carolina retorts, turning on him. “Maine’s dead, Wash, and it’s not him. It’s just his _helmet_.”

Wash gapes at her.

“You know how much he hated being out of his armor. That helmet was a part of him—”

“Don’t you dare act like he wasn’t important to me, Wash,” Carolina growls. The impassive visor of her helmet seems to glare straight through him. “I know what he was to you, but don’t you dare act like he wasn’t important to me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Wash says, taking a step back. “That’s not what I meant at all. I’m just. I just… Carolina…”

He’s glad he’s wearing the helmet, regardless of how futilely it is at concealing what he feels. She turns away again, puts her back to him.

“I thought you’d be with me on this,” he says.

She growls in frustration, raises and arm and knocks her knuckles against the doorframe. Deliberately not a punch. He wonders if it there’ll be a line of tiny dents later, if someone looks.

“We don’t have enough manpower,” she says, not lowering her first from the doorframe, but her voice is careful, deliberate. “We have to think carefully about our next move. You know Hargrove’s calculating, we can’t afford to run off half-cocked.”

Wash nods miserably. She’s right. Of course she’s right.

“I just can’t stand the thought of him having it,” Wash says. “According to the blueprints he’s got it—

“Don’t. Say it.”

“He’s got it up in his trophy room,” Wash plows on. The two words hand in the air for a moment, both of them letting settle in their minds like a casket lowering into a grave. “He deserves better than that.”

Carolina shoves off the wall and half turns, looking at him over her shoulder.

“He deserved a lot that he never got, Wash,” she says. “You didn’t have the access to his files that I did as commanding officer.”

“Did he ever tell you about his squad?” she continues “About which company of the Spartan IIIs he belonged to?

Wash blinks slowly at her, registering her words.

“He didn’t talk about it,” Wash says. “I didn’t push.”

“They weren’t expected to survive, any of them,” she says. “They didn’t.”

Wash closes his eyes.

“They were used, and thrown away.”

He knows about the Spartans. _Spartans never die_. Excellent for morale, excellent for publicity, maybe. He wonders if it was ever any comfort to the soldiers. (They weren’t designed to need comfort. They were soldiers, after all.)

The silence waxes and wanes between them as they both ignore the parallels, and they think of their friend. Spartan. Freelancer. Meta.

“Don’t you dare say he didn’t matter to me,” Carolina says, voice bitter. “I gave up my AI for him. And look how that turned out.”

“He didn’t blame you for that, Carolina,” Wash says, trying to shiver away the coldness in his bones.

“Well, he should have.”

“We don’t know what was happening with him and Sigma,” Wash tries again. “We don’t know—“

“That’s it,” she interrupts. “We don’t know. We won’t ever know.”

Carolina pivots on a heel, leans back against the door frame. Her arms cross tightly across her chest, sharp visor trained on her own boots.

“When I woke up,” she says. “At the bottom. I thought…Eta and Iota were just _gone_ and I thought it’d—“

She blows out a frustrated breath, digs her mental heels in, and continues.

“I thought the Recovery teams would be coming,” she says. “I thought it’d be okay to just rest a minute. To just wait.”

He looks up at her. It’s a funny thing, these helmets. They should cover all expression, but you get to know someone, you fight with them, fight _with_ them, know them and, and he knows her gaze isn’t on the floor, it’s miles and miles away with the sound of the wind in her ears.

“I waited,” she says.

Wash doesn’t ask how long she waited at the bottom of that mountain. He doesn’t ask what she thought about as the hole the AI left ravaged through her mind, as the shock set in and dissipated. He doesn’t ask whether she thought they were dead at the top of that cliff, if anyone survived the crash, if she calculated how long it would take a recovery team to be sent down for her, if she tried to count the seconds. He doesn’t ask her how long it was before she got up.

He doesn’t tell her they all thought she was dead. She knows. He knows about how much good it’d do.

Slowly, he turns to rest his back against the other side of the doorway. Two freelancers, framing either side of the door. Their helmets bent as if in grief, or contemplation, or maybe even prayer.

Carolina doesn’t look at him and he doesn’t look at her.

“We can go back for him, Carolina,” Wash says. “We can go back for Maine.”

She doesn’t answer for a long moment.

“Yeah,” she says, straightening. “Yeah okay. We go back for Maine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Queseraawesome.tumblr.com


End file.
